25 Ways Marshall and Lily Came to Be
by secondmezzanine
Summary: 25 defining moments in the relationship of the almost-too-cutest couple I know, in no particular order.


**Disclaimer**: Sadly, I own nothing.  
**Summary**: Defining moments in the relationship of the almost-too-cutest couple I know, in no particular order.

_**25 Ways Marshall and Lily Came to Be**_

1. Lily has always liked tall boys. When she was thirteen, a boy in the tenth grade helped her reach a book on the top shelf in the library for her, and she blushed through the rest of study hall. The day she meets Marshall, he's so tall ("_just six-four_," he tells her, like that's nothing) he bumps his head on a doorway in the dorm. She immediately touches his forehead to ask if he's all right, and finds herself blushing like she's thirteen years old again.

2. On their first date, Marshall asks her all about growing up in Brooklyn. He's most interested in the playground in Park Slope where she read Nancy Drew novels as a kid. He says that someday he'd like to see the swings where she sat reading.

3. When Marshall gets into law school at Columbia, Lily bakes him five different kinds of cookies as a congratulatory present. She burns three batches, but she saves the bowls for Marshall to "clean" to make up for it.

4. After Fiero the Car's demise, Lily frames Marshall's ownership papers and hangs them next to Marshall's family photos in the apartment.

5. When Marshall burns his tongue on hot-and-sour soup during their third date, he swears seventeen times in a thirty-second period. Afterward, he apologizes profusely, thinking he's offended her (she thinks he's hilarious, but lets him believe for awhile that she's too lady-like to ever swear herself).

6. Their first fight is over a miscommunication about where they will meet after their Tuesday classes. Lily is so afraid Marshall is going to break up with her that she refuses to answer her phone for a week. Her roommate, sick of taking messages, finally gives her an ultimatum: either face Marshall, or never be allowed to mention him again. Lily calls him back ten minutes later.

7. After they've finally "officially" moved in together, Ted eats the last of Lily's Pink Lady apples. The next day Lily finds a new bag of Pink Lady apples in the refrigerator with a note in Marshall's handwriting pinned on them: "For Lily ONLY."

8. After accidentally stabbing Lily with a sword and shooting her in the eye with a champagne cork, Marshall buys two first-aid kits. He puts one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen. He doesn't intend for any further injuries to occur, of course, but he likes to be prepared.

9. Marshall is shocked to discover that Lily has never seen _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_. He hasn't seen it since he was a kid, so they watch it together and are horrified to find that it is the most sexist Christmas special ever to air. They promise each other that next time it airs on TV, they'll just go to the bar and get drunk instead.

10. The first time Marshall takes Lily to Minnesota and shows her around St. Cloud, she slips on the ice and breaks her wrist. He spends months worrying that she hates Minnesota until he overhears her telling Robin that that the Mall of America is "actually a sort of cool place to shop."

11. She likes the way her hand fits in his, the way he sometimes holds one of her hands with both of his. When they go to the movies, sometimes she forgets to think about what's happening onscreen because she's too distracted by the warmth of his palm, and the way his thumb presses against her skin.

12. When Lily goes to San Francisco, Marshall keeps mistaking redheads on the street for her. He does so many double-takes he's beginning to get whiplash, but he doesn't care. He keeps holding out hope one of those red-headed women will be her.

13. When Lily returns with dyed-brown hair, he can't get used to it. It's not until they're back together and he can touch her hair, look at it for as long as he wants without feeling pathetically lovesick, that he warms to her new look.

14. In San Francisco, a painter in Lily's program asks her to go out for coffee. He looks a little like Marshall; he's tall, anyway, with a few scattered freckles. She feels like throwing her canvas at him but instead she just lets the guy down easy. After the guy leaves, she wonders if anyone's asked Marshall out yet. At the thought, she tries to kick her easel, misses, and winds up sprawled on the floor covered in paint.

15. Lily doesn't tell her parents about Marshall until six months into their relationship. It's not because she thinks they wouldn't approve. It's that when they find out that Marshall's pre-law, they'll be overjoyed, and she'd prefer to piss them off for just a little while longer. She's not quite ready to let her teenage years go. Marshall seems okay with that.

16. Lily always believed she would never get married, no matter what her high school boyfriend Scooter thought. Then Marshall took her to his cousin's wedding and she found herself feeling way too sentimental. She drank six glasses of champagne, hoping to rid herself of the feeling, but it never went away.

17. Marshall went on two dates in high school. The first was with a girl named Wendi, whom he took to the junior prom. Wendi made a face at the corsage he gave her, and then left with a guy named Hankfort (really) immediately following the prom dinner. The other date was with a pretty brunette named Jen, who let him share her popcorn at the movies, laughed sweetly at his jokes, and announced the next day that she was getting back together with her ex-boyfriend. When Marshall met Lily, he figured he didn't have much to lose.

18. Lily thinks she can't sing, but he likes to hear her sing in the shower. She usually switches between Elton John's greatest hits and selections from _The Little Mermaid_, but on the day Marshall catches her singing an obscure Chumbawumba song while she washes her hair, he decides to start looking for an engagement ring. He can't let a girl like that get away.

19. When Lily gets her student-teaching assignment, Marshall threatens to kick the ass of any kid who gives her trouble. She just kisses him, says thanks, and reminds him the kids are only five, but she's thinking she can't ever let a guy like him go.

20. They decide to take dance lessons for their wedding, but after two lessons with an uptight instructor named Karl, they decide to blow off the dancing and go home to play the Wii instead. The dance lessons are all right, but they can't stop laughing at Karl's extra-short shorts.

21. After the wedding, Lily can't stop saying the words _my husband_, finding reasons to tell people at school what Marshall, _my husband_, bought her on their honeymoon, what Marshall, _my husband_, said last night. It feels grown-up, mature in the best kind of way, the way she never imagined she'd feel about anything.

22. Marshall laughs along when Barney teases Ted about wanting to find the one and get married, but he can't blame Ted for seeming so desperate sometimes. He's not sure who he'd be if Lily weren't sitting next to him in that booth at McLaren's.

23. Lily hates those romance novels where the knight saves the damsel or the rich lord saves the governess. She prefers to save herself. But when Marshall says when he married her, he married her problems too, and they'll solve her debt problem together, she can't help thinking, if just for a fleeting moment, _my hero_. It's cheesy, she knows, but it's true all the same.

24. Lily doesn't find out that Marshall can play the piano until they've been together for eight months. She's mad he never told her (especially since he's told her _everything_ else) until he writes her a wordless song called "The Lilypad Song," which he plays for her on a piano in the Wesleyan Student Center lobby when no one else is around.

25. When they finally move into their new, albeit crooked, apartment, Marshall immediately comes down with the flu and Lily catches it in record time. They lie together on their bed surrounded by wadded-up Kleenex and extra blankets, and talk about how good life will be in the new place. But even with the crooked floors, and mountain of debt they're facing, the and shivering and sniffling and doses of cough medicine every four hours, neither of them can help thinking that life seems pretty good already.


End file.
